Thursday, August 26, 2010

How to use Twitter for Your Business

Quick Definition

Twitter is a communication platform that can help you stay connected with your customers and target audience. You can use twitter to share a small amount of information like a link back to your website, blog, upcoming event or sale page. This also helps people become interested in your company or brand. If you haven’t been surveying your customers on a regular basis about your product or service, this is a great way to gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, while building relationships.

Can I Use This?

Twitter lets you write and read messages up to 140 characters. The messages or Tweets are public, but you decide the messages you want to receive by who you follow.

By combining tweets that are quick to write, easy to read, public, controlled by the recipient and exchangeable anywhere, you have a powerful, instantaneous way to communicate. Real-time communication is turning out to be revolutionary for users and businesses alike.

Twitter connects you to your customers in a way that was never before possible. Businesses of all kinds increasingly find that listening and engaging with your audience formulates happier customers, passionate advocates, key product or service improvements and in many cases, more sales.

Building Relationships with your Twitter Profile.

Include the names or @usernames of the people twittering from your company in your Bio or Custom Background. It is also a good idea to add email addresses.

Look regularly for comments about your company, brand, product or service. Be prepared to address concerns and thank people for praises.

Keep track of your @messages and use the Saved Searches feature to easily track mentions of your company, brand, product or service.

Don’t feel compelled to follow everyone who follows you, but do respond to some questions or comments addressed to you.

If you like a particular tweet from someone you are following, retweet it.

Make sure your tweets provide some real value.

Measure the Value of Twitter

Although it can be tricky to add up the value of relationships, Twitter does lend itself as a measurement in a few ways, especially if you’ve already defined what you hope to accomplish for your company in three months, six months or a year using Twitter consistently. Tactics like these can help you assess your progress in meeting your goals.

When you offer deals via Twitter, use a unique coupon code so that you can tell how many people take you up on that Twitter-based promotion. If you have an online presence, you can also set up a landing page for a promotion to track not only click-throughs, but further behavior and conversations.

Use third-party tools to figure out how much traffic your website is receiving from Twitter.

For more information on using Twitter for your business, contact The Hype Writer.